Monday, April 07, 2008

Oprah sans Uma

I’ve been away for a while, so I’ll return with this statement: I hate Oprah.

Now before a couple days ago I simply hated the idea of Oprah. The fact that some lady with no particular qualifications or expertise holds sway over millions of viewers opinions on every subject under the sun. Oprah influences American reading habits more than any other person, which just seems wrong. Granted, anything promoting literacy is good and I don’t have a particular individual in mind who should be the preeminent authority on all literature, but suffice it to say that I feel Oprah shouldn’t hold such power.

After a couple people telling me “have you seen pregnant man!” I decided to watch the Oprah episode in question. Thank you Youtube. Here I’d like to interject that I was not at all amazed by the pregnant man, as people suggested I would be. I have little problem calling the individual in question a man (he is a woman who has undergone gender reassignment) but he isn’t male. This isn’t an XY individual that has miraculously become pregnant. It’s an XX individual who has had their breasts removed and undergone testosterone therapy. Although it’s socially unusual that said person is pregnant, biologically this is no big deal.

In any case, my point being that this is the first time I’ve actually watched an episode of Oprah, and she drove me crazy. She added nothing of value to the presentation. She just threw out banalities and seemed to get excited about random things.